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Samuel Spring Gardner, a Maine Parson in Alabama

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Samuel Spring Gardner, a Maine Parson in Alabama Maine History Volume 23 Number 4 Article 2 4-1-1984 Samuel Spring Gardner, A Maine Parson in Alabama Michael J. Daniel Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainehistoryjournal Part of the Political History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Daniel, Michael J.. "Samuel Spring Gardner, A Maine Parson in Alabama." Maine History 23, 4 (1984): 151-176. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mainehistoryjournal/vol23/iss4/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UMaine. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maine History by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UMaine. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MICHAEL J. DANIEL S a m u e l S p r in g G a r d n e r A M a in e P a r s o n in A l a b a m a He is a compound mixture of impudence, imperti­ nence, ingratitude, selfishness, penuriousness, malignity and low cunning. He is a religious thief - a psalm-singing hypocrite - a praise-God liar - a loud braying swindler, and a smooth tongue deceiver. He was convinced fwc] in iniquity, brought forth in sin, reared in crime, educated in the arts of stealing, and has followed rascality for a living all his life. Thus did the Greenville, Alabama, Advocate define the term “carpetbagger” and reveal its attitude toward the town’s most prominent example, Samuel Spring Gardner of Maine. To those well acquainted with Gardner, a college-educated minis­ ter, the definition hardly seemed an accurate description, but in August of 1868 the white people of Butler County, Alabama, worried little about accuracy. Just three weeks before the pub­ lication of this tirade, Gardner had assumed office as the judge of probate of Butler County and had inaugurated a period of “nigger supremacy and Yankee rule.” Most whites resented Gardner's election by black voters and his “usurpation” of office. This politically active carpetbagger was, at least in the eyes of the white inhabitants of the county, guilty of “cunning,” “stealing,” and “rascality.”1 Gardner’s three-year sojourn in Butler County typifies the experiences of other carpetbaggers throughout Alabama and the Deep South.2 Many Northerners moved to the South for economic or idealistic reasons; some had legitimate planting or business interests there, while others hoped to aid the newly freed blacks in their transition from slavery to freedom. As long as Northerners did not involve themselves in politics, they 151 SAMUEL SPRING GARDNER were generally well received. Once they began to seek political office, however, the carpetbaggers soon ignited the enmity of native whites. Northerners, including politicians, teachers, and Freedman’s Bureau agents, who “inflamed” the black popula­ tion and disturbed race relations, often found themselves the victims of beatings or assassination. White Southerners resisted efforts to accord political and social equality to the freedmen and they did not hesitate to employ violence to pre­ vent this revolution. The image of the carpetbagger as a “low-class, poverty- stricken, ignorant, greedy, utterly unscrupulous adventurer” has been popular with generations of Southerners, but Gard­ ner’s Maine background and his record in Alabama belie the accuracy of this stereotype.3 Gardner, the son of Samuel and Mary Gardner, was born in 1831 in Cambridgeport in Middle­ sex County, Massachusetts. In the late 1830s the Gardner fam­ ily — Samuel, Sr., and his wife Mary, three sons, and two daughters - moved to Maine and settled in the town of Brewer in Penobscot County. The elder Gardner was a ropemaker by profession. His oldest son, Eben, eventually became a merchant in Bucksport in Hancock County; his middle son, William, lived in Brewer and followed his father into the ropemaking business. The youngest son, Samuel, was the scholar in the family. Young Gardner studied at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and in the 1850s attended Bowdoin College. He graduated from Bowdoin in 1855 with the B.A. degree and was awarded an honorary A.M. degree in 1858. Following the completion of college studies, he taught at Bluehill Academy in Maine for two years and then for one year at the Mt. Pleasant Military Institute in Sing Sing, New York. Gardner returned to Penobscot County in 1859 and enrolled in the Bangor Theo­ logical Seminary. After graduation in 1861, he became the pas­ tor of a Congregational church in Bellows Falls, Vermont, where he gained a reputation for being “an able and laborious pastor and preacher of the Gospel of Christ.”4 In the spring of 1864 Gardner made a decision that changed the course of his life: he decided to join the United States Army, 152 SAMUEL SPRING GARDNER not as a regular soldier, but as the chaplain of a regiment of black troops. He traveled to Port Hudson, Louisiana, in June of 1864 and assumed the duties of chaplain of the Eighty-third U.S. Colored Infantry. After the dissolution of this regiment in August 1864, he became the chaplain of the Seventy-third U.S. Colored Infantry. He remained in Louisiana with the army until the end of the Civil War. Gardner s wartime association with black soldiers prepared him well for his first postwar employment as an official of the Bureau of Refugees, Freed- men, and Abandoned Lands.5 In May of 1865 Gardner moved to Alabama, where he soon joined the staff of the Freedmen’s Bureau as the subassistant commissioner of the Selma subdistrict — a district that included several of Alabama’s predominantly black counties. In Selma he encountered many of the problems that plagued bureau officials throughout the South. Many planters distrusted bureau agents, and even the white civilian clerks who worked in Gardner’s office were dismissed from their jobs because of their “undisguised hostile sentiments.” White antagonism toward the freedmen compounded Gardner’s difficulties. Most whites retained their “harsh and despotic bearing” toward blacks and treated them with “bitter hatred and scorn.’’ The multitudinous problems faced by the “helpless freed people” distressed Gardner, but his inability to remedy the situation pained him even more. The sheer size of the Selma subdistrict and the lack of adequate troop support prevented him from providing much aid or protection to blacks who lived outside the city of Selma.6 Although bureau work occupied most of his time, Gardner still cultivated a plantation in 1866. With another bureau offi­ cial he leased a plantation near Selma and hired blacks to farm it. Gardner, like some other bureau men, viewed the South as a new frontier begging for investment. The high price of cotton immediately after the war and the location of his plantation - in the richest cotton district in Alabama - seemed to forecast success for his efforts. Gardner’s planting venture, however, like those of many other carpetbaggers, apparently failed. The 153 SAMUEL SPRING GARDNER conservative press in Alabama later charged that Gardner did not obtain enough money to pay his black laborers and had in fact swindled them out of their wages (just as native whites were sometimes wont to do).7 In February 1867 bureau officials appointed Gardner to the position of subassistant commissioner of the Greenville subdis­ trict. They intended the appointment to be temporary - ten or fifteen days — but later made the assignment a permanent one. Gardner’s move to Greenville, located sixty miles southeast of Selma in Butler County, occasioned no hostile comments from the conservative local press. However, the new subassistant commissioner enjoyed only a brief period of harmony in Butler County. The Reconstruction Acts of March 1867, enfranchising blacks, dramatically altered the attitude of white Alabamians toward the Freedmen’s Bureau and its agents. Once Gardner began to implement the congressional plan of reconstruction, his “honeymoon” with conservative whites soon ended.8 To promote the registration of black voters, bureau officials temporarily relieved Gardner of his duties at Greenville in June of 1867 and ordered him to undertake an inspection tour of south Alabama. They instructed him to meet with the freed- men and make sure they understood the process of voter reg­ istration. Gardner spoke at several public meetings where he explained the advantages of full citizenship to the blacks and encouraged them to develop “such public and social virtues as would show them to be worthy of citizenship, and justify its be­ stowal.” The freedmen expressed their thanks for his efforts with cries of “God bless you” and “Bless God for this,” and this outpouring of emotion undoubtedly reinforced Gardner’s sup­ port of Reconstruction and strengthened his own sense of mis­ sion. Since native whites could not be counted upon to protect the rights of freedmen, then others must assume the respon­ sibility.9 Bureau officials had not envisioned Gardner’s assignment as an “electioneering tour,” but Gardner assumed that the new black voters would support the Republican party. He hoped to aid in the establishment of a strong Republican party in Ala­ 75-/ SAMUEL SPRING GARDNER bama that would protect the newly won freedom of the state’s black inhabitants. Gardner was not a recent convert to Repub­ licanism. In his youth he had been an “earnest and outspoken” abolitionist and was an “old line Whig” until the new Republi­ can party attracted his allegiance. He had supported John C. Fremont in 1856 and Abraham Lincoln in I860 and 1864. By 1867 Gardner s views were decidedly “radical” - he supported the Radical Republican program of aiding blacks and restrict­ ing white opponents of Reconstruction.10 Once Gardner resumed his duties as subassistant commis­ sioner in Greenville in late August, he actively participated in Butler County politics.
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